


Lingering

by KrisseyCrystal (IceCreAMS)



Category: The Legend of Zelda & Related Fandoms, The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild
Genre: Action/Adventure, BotW 2, Creepy, Deaf Character, Deaf!Link, F/M, Post-Breath of the Wild, and is losing their shit, and simultaneously back on their shit, but doesn't have to be read that way, guess who else was inspired by the botw 2 trailer, the zelink is there if u squint, time for the spoops and the endless theories!!, u can pry deaf!link from my cold dead hands
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-16
Updated: 2019-06-16
Packaged: 2020-05-13 02:54:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,341
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19242379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/IceCreAMS/pseuds/KrisseyCrystal
Summary: Even though there are two wills already at war, Zelda thinks it might be too much to hope that this was just a case of her and Link being in the wrong place at the wrong time.- * - * -She does not add,Besides, what are the chances this corpse is even still alive? If the paintings are anything to believe, it’s been ten thousand years.The quiet, distant, slow heartbeat rids herself of that potential comfort.Zelda turns around. Her eyes fall upon the green letters swirling, curling around each other--folding over and straightening out into an alphabet that, when she tilts her head, looks strangely like Urbosa’s native tongue. But where Urbosa’s handwriting had been messy and unintelligible, jagged like the lightning she snapped from her fingers, this is......different.“Souls of the dead, huh?”





	Lingering

**Author's Note:**

> In which I've delved a little far too deeply into the wealth BotW2 trailer analysis videos that have sprung up since E3 and can't help but think that as people have tried to work out the chronology of snapshots and make sense of the hype source we have been given, they're ignoring the issue of who is holding the torches and when and what that means for staging and where characters are when certain things happen.
> 
> So I wrote a whole fanfic.
> 
> Because of a torch. 
> 
> Bother me on Twitter or Tumblr if you want to hear more about my theory for BotW2 besides what I've delved into here (or if you're frustrated with how extra I was with the ciphers): [Twitter](https://twitter.com/kissykrissey) / [Tumblr](https://krisseycrystal.tumblr.com/)

They stop for a short rest under the light of three torches. Zelda kneels at the riverbank and cups water up to her face. With a toss, she presses the tips of her fingers into her brow and skirts around her features as the water drips over her nose and down her cheeks. Sea green eyes blink up into the darkness. They fall upon the jagged and scraggly lengths of luminous ore springing up from the rocky wall on the other side of the underground river.

Her hands fall into her lap. Her fingers spread wide over her thighs. Across the river, a small rat scrambles across the glowing ore and into the shadows.

Zelda waves a hand over her shoulder and turns around. “Link.”

When Link does not turn from the greatbull, she splashes river water out towards him. The wet droplets on the tips of his boots grab his attention and spin clear blue eyes back towards her.

There are many inconveniences to traveling under the dim light of an underground cavern and two torches, but the biggest, Zelda believes, is that it has made their efforts to communicate that much more difficult.

She moves her hands quickly.

_Hand me the Sheikah slate, would you?_

Link nods. In a matter of moments, he’s at her side again, holding out the tablet.

Zelda taps it awake and slides quickly for Link’s photo and the data entry that had been restored. No matter how many times she sees the images, her mouth still twitches up into a smile for the sheer _stupidity_ of some of the stunts her knight had managed to pull while recovering his strength and power. She taps on the picture of a Luminous Stone and reads.

“Huh. Glows with the souls of the dead,” she repeats, tracing the words with a fingertip.

She can feel Link’s warmth as he crouches at her shoulder, his gaze peering over to see what she’s seeing. His immediate breath and presence is a sharp comfort juxtaposed against the unsettling dark and ever-present, heavy feeling that they are steadily approaching something much more sinister than what she held off for a hundred years.

Zelda looks up at the jagged ores. “And yet there are so many of them down here,” she whispers. “How?”

She doesn’t know if Link is aware of what she’s saying, but she can see out of the corner of her eye his figure straighten to a stand. When she turns, she watches the shadows of his face in the flickering torchlight, the way the fire melts the blue of his eyes to a deep indigo.

There’s a hundred-year-old scar on his neck peeking up above the underlayer of his chainmail. Zelda’s eyes fall upon the rugged bump of it and the way the firelight hungrily licks at its edge and tries to ignore the feeling slowly becoming certainty that something is waiting deep under this earth--ancient, ageless--

\--and it intends to consume them here.

* * *

They were going to cross over the minecart rail bridge with the greatbull, but even after all of her thorough research and meticulous study ahead of their excursion, Zelda could not have accounted for how time has slowly ruined this place. The bridge is decaying, crumbling, and there’s a break in the stone too large for the greatbull to step across. (Too large for the greatbull to _want_ to step across, though she pulls on the reins as hard as she can as Link pushes on its flank.) Link is confident the two of them can make it to the Origin Point from here, and Zelda believes him. But they cannot bring their things with them.

They leave the greatbull behind with one of the three torches, and everything Zelda deems is unessential. Then, each of them take a torch in hand.

They walk.

* * *

“Incredible.”

Zelda’s fingers trace the faded paintings on the stone wall. She looks at the swirls of scarlet figures, the largest at the front with a trident in hand, riding upon the backs of horses into what looks like a battle. She releases a breath she hadn’t been aware she was holding.

“Link, if you would.” She holds out her torch and Link takes it.

Zelda unclasps the Sheikah slate from her belt and holds it up to the wall.

_Snap._

_Snap._

Slowly, Zelda walks along and observes what she can from the pictures the slate captures. When she reaches the edge of the stretch of images, she bends over the slate and slides through the new photos. Her eyes are wide with wonder. Suddenly, she feels young again. Suddenly, she feels--

“Link, do you know what this _means_?” she breathes.

She turns around and clutches the slate to her chest with both arms. An eager smile breaks out on her face. “These are _just_ like the ones in my books from the ancient era! And that tapestry! This is the _exact_ same art style as those that have been dated back ten thousand years ago. That--”

Zelda laughs to herself, quietly. She tucks a loose lock of blonde hair behind a pointed ear. “--I mean, I’m not one to usually admit that I had _doubts_ about my own fully-educated and perfectly sound predictions, _but._ I _will_ admit that I had been...worried when we first began our descent.”

It’s incredible to Zelda how, even with both hands preoccupied, Link is _still_ capable of calling her bluff with a single look.

Zelda huffs and rolls her eyes. “All right, all right. I was a bit _more_ than worried. Yes, I thought that I had made a mistake. But what else was I supposed to think? When we first began our journey, all I could see all around us was Zonai architecture. Nothing that looked Hyrulean. I could only interpret that I had made some sort of mistake, that the ancient evil from whence sprouted Calamity Ganon must be in a different...creepy, underground cavern. Even if it academically made the most sense to have been this one that we found during the rebuilding, covered up and dormant for who knows how long under Hyrule castle.”

Zelda meets Link’s eyes again. There is something soft and gentle and warm in his face.

She bites her lip. “Is it weird to be relieved that I didn’t make a mistake? Especially when we don’t know what kind of monstrosity and horrors we’ll find down here? It could be ten thousand years old, and yet, I can only feel...”

Link has a sort of small smile, Zelda’s noticed--the kind of smile that’s so slight and gentle that it’s barely detectable, barely noticeable, until suddenly it grows; then you realize he’s been smiling at you all along.

His smile widens now as he hands her back her torch with a gentle shake of his head.

Zelda clutches the slate closer and somehow, courage swells in her chest.

* * *

It’s kind of-sort of Zelda’s fault the second torch goes out, but Link never says anything about it. Maybe because he never saw what happened until the fire at his left was suddenly snuffed out.

When he turns and lifts his torch, the first thing he sees is Zelda scramble to straighten herself, fingers tugging down on her fitted, royal blue tunic. Her face is a bright, bright red; the pink of her lips pressed together in such a way that rounds her cheeks--admittedly--adorably. The burnt-end torch, now unlit, lies prone at the toe of her boot.

_It startled me. That’s all._

Zelda’s signs are shaky but easier to read than her lips by one torchlight, now.

Link frowns and tilts his head.

 _Never mind._ Zelda shakes her own and turns to march ahead. After a few stomps, she comes to a stop, sighs, turns, and then adds, _It was just a rat._

The snicker escapes before he can stuff it.

Zelda huffs and blows her cheeks up rounder. Her two golden brows furrow hard over her green-blue eyes--a face he instantly recognizes time and time again from one hundred years ago. Once, he had been looking forward to seeing that face, that look of indignant frustration, if only because it meant a dormant memory had finally resurfaced. Even if most of his memories of them from one hundred years ago had been of her shouting at him for one thing or another.

Maybe that’s _why_ he finds this so funny.

“What?” Zelda props her fists on her hips and crooks her head. Her short, golden hair falls by her ear. “Are you laughing at me, Link?”

Link’s smile softens and he holds out his torch to her. She takes it without a word.

 _Should I_ not _find it funny that the same princess who held back Calamity Ganon for one hundred years all by herself was scared of a small rat?_

Zelda rolls her eyes and practically _shoves_ the torch back into his hand. “Oh, _stop it._ ”

Link laughs harder than maybe he should.

He jogs up to her side and waves at her. When she finally looks to him again, he does his best to sign with one hand, _You should look out. I hear rats are--_

Zelda turns away, sticking up her nose before she can see Link finish.

“Nope. Sorry. Not listening.”

She marches ahead.

Link laughs again.

He laughs so hard, he doesn’t notice when Zelda finally comes to an abrupt stop. Not until he bumps into her.

Link looks up and lifts the torch.

The cavern has opened up. Where before, the Zonai walls and columns had broken down, becoming embedded in the narrowing rock walls, this chamber is gaping, round. There’s a circular, layered stone dais in the center where from the ceiling, there might have been a cave-in beginning:  the soil and stone have been pulled downwards from its middle.

Just under its apex, a single, mummified figure is bent backward, kneeling on one leg. Its hanging curtain of hair, dark and deep and red, is a shade lighter than the violet malice crawling in writhing rivers from its chest.

There is a hand of eerie, luminous green digging golden-clasped fingers into it, keeping the figure pinned. Scripts of the same color spiral upward from the point where palm and sternum meet.

Zelda thinks she can hear a distant heartbeat. There’s a tickling voice, too; someone or something whispering an odd, discordant melody as if they were bent over her shoulder, murmuring ancient sins and secrets low into her ear. Just for her. She jerks, looking over her shoulder, but only Link is there.

Gone is the humor in his face. In its place is the steely resolve of the same Champion who fought Calamity Ganon with the legendary sword on his back--and won.

When she turns to him, he meets her eyes. The hardness in his gaze softens with a question. Concern.

Zelda shakes her head.

If he can’t hear it, then that means the voice is physical, real. Not something incorporeal reaching out to affect her mind; else, it most likely would have reached out to Link’s, too. Something--or someone--was emitting real _soundwaves_ at an audible level.

Zelda swallows.

She looks to Link again.

 _Remember what I told you earlier,_ she stresses. Nausea rolls over in her stomach; a thick, somersaulting sensation. Is it the sheer amount of malice in the room? Or is it something else? And what would happen if she touched a strand? _Over ten thousand years ago, Calamity Ganon was born from this place--most likely, from the corpse of that man there. We have to be extremely careful; whatever wards are being kept here, whatever magic affects this place, we cannot afford to break or ruin any of it. We are here to_ study; _that is all. And who knows? Perhaps there will be a connection here to explain why the Divine Beasts have been acting so strange. There’s surely enough lingering malice to still affect Hyrule..._

Link’s eyes dart over her shoulder to the corpse in the center of the room. For a moment, Zelda wonders what he sees; what’s going on behind those ocean blue eyes of his. He always said so little compared to what she knows he is feeling and thinking inside. But when he finally does meet her gaze again, the communication is clear. His lips are pressed thin, angled downwards.

He does not like it.

None of this is safe.

Despite her own nervousness and the whispering riddling her ear, Zelda finds herself smiling, if only to placate him.

“I’m sure it will be fine,” she says. “Whatever magic is going on down here--whatever seals are in place--if it’s held for over ten thousand years, it’ll hold for ten thousand more. It won’t break now.”

She takes a breath. The air tastes like palm wine.

She does not add, _Besides, what are the chances this corpse is even still alive? If the paintings are anything to believe, it’s been ten thousand years._

The quiet, distant, slow heartbeat rids herself of that potential comfort.

Zelda turns around. Her eyes fall upon the green letters swirling, curling around each other--folding over and straightening out into an alphabet that, when she tilts her head, looks strangely like Urbosa’s native tongue. But where Urbosa’s handwriting had been messy and unintelligible, jagged like the lightning she snapped from her fingers, this is...

...different.

“Souls of the dead, huh?” Zelda whispers.

She presses her lips into a thin line and steps forward.

* * *

In her father’s secret study, the one place King Rhoam had foolishly thought his curious daughter would never find, there was a book.

It detailed the disappearance of an ancient civilization called the Zonai. It was a fraying tome with gold trim, bound together with a string of leather because the spine could not be trusted to hold shape. The letters were faded and difficult to make out from years and years of page-turning. Zelda knew her father and mother had poured through it as much as she did when she found it; how could they not have? The text stirred questions.

The Zonai it discussed were real at one point; there was no doubt about that. In her and Link’s travels to awaken the power of the goddess, Zelda had seen the remains of their culture for herself:  their temples and their labyrinths. Icons and idols in the worship of a noble dragon. Potentially more than one, if you were to ask Zelda.

But there are also suggestions within the text that Zelda had never seen mention of anywhere else:  the Zonai’s advancements in science, thanks to the power of Luminous Stones.

Zelda had thought it strange that the same material said to glow with the “souls of the dead” could be used to power such technology. Was it on purpose? Was _that_ why it worked? There was no way verify; the Zonai had suddenly disappeared thousands of years ago. All any scholar had left were meager hypotheses as to their true fate.

Endless hypotheses.

Zelda shakes her head. The consistent, jittery whispers in her ear are distracting:  the cause for her lack of focus, she’s sure.

Zelda looks down to the Sheikah slate on her lap and flips back for the Luminous Stones entry. Something _bothers_ her in the vague in between of what she can see around her and what she knows. It’s more than the unsettling, heavy level of malice still in the room after ten thousand years, more than the continual heartbeat that reminds her that though this being appears dead--it or he or whatever most likely isn’t.

Dead.

Death.

_There’s so much of it here, it’s almost choking me._

Zelda’s eyes inexplicably water. She blinks hard and scrubs the back of her hand against an eye and huffs.

“Ugh. There’s got to be something I’m _missing._ ”

When she pushes herself up to a stand, Link follows, still carrying their remaining torchlight. Zelda clips the Sheikah slate to her waist and steps forward, taking care to walk between the odd, wriggling ribbons of malice stretching out across the chamber. Link walks step by step after her, only coming to a stop when she does. He stands steadfastly--resolutely--as always--at her side.

Zelda stares at the green of the letters and the glow of the hand latched onto the corpse’s (not corpse? body?) chest. When she turns to Link and holds out her hand, he gives her the torch. Her hand raises, holding the light aloft to get a better look at the mummified corpse. She lifts her eyes to the endless spiral of luminous--

\--she gasps.

“Link.”

Her hand wave snaps his eyes to hers.

“The Zonai. Have you heard of them?”

Link’s expression pinches. He gives a modest shrug and a nod.

“They were rumored to have managed incredible technological feats, yet they disappeared thousands of years ago. ‘Mysteriously.’”

Link nods again.

“And Luminous Stones, just like the ones we’ve seen so much of here underneath Hyrule castle, they glow with the...souls of the dead, right?”

Link’s nod is slower.

“Do you think…” Zelda’s tongue clicks slowly against the roof of her mouth; she lets the sound linger throughout the chamber. Is it just her imagination, or is that heartbeat getting faster? Or maybe that’s the rapid pitter-patter of her own heart in her chest? “...do you think it’s possible that the technology they used was so amazing because they learned how to harness a _soul_ as a power source?”

Link doesn’t nod this time. He watches her, gaze unblinking.

“And do you think it’s possible that, _if_ that were true, the reason they disappeared all those thousands of years ago was because they gave their own souls to keep trapped the Origin Point of a great evil? What if--” Zelda’s breath hitched. “--what if we’re staring at an example of their technology, right now? That green light, these stones--what if this is like a lingering will of the Zonai?”

Link points to her side

Zelda doesn’t quite understand until she turns to look and sees what he has:  the right, upturned hand of the corpse has begun to twitch.

Her eyes widen.

She takes a step back.

“It’s a trick of the light. Surely.”

Link steps forward. His outstretched hand reaches in front of Zelda. Together, they watch the hand twitch again.

Zelda’s own words come back to her, a bitter recourse. Whispered tauntingly in her ear by the same off-key, jiltering speech:   _If it’s held for over ten thousand years, it’ll hold for ten thousand more._ That, and a counter-melody. Something about a time? Something’s time is...coming?

The ground begins to shake.

 

 _H_ _OYRW_ _XSF_ _,_ _SRHRNHSR_ _._

 

Zelda stumbles for footing.

Link reaches over to grab her arm. Instinctively, Zelda falls into him, curling her shoulder. Link takes the torch from her so quickly, Zelda hasn’t noticed it’s passed hands and is no longer in her grasp until she finds both sets of her fingers digging into the side of his tunic. There’s a burst of malice, surging upward around the hand of light. It swallows the green, covering the floating script until the snake of malice crashes against the ceiling. Darkness and pungent evil, thick and heavy, permeates the room.

The corpse, freed from its constraints--the hand nowhere to be seen--sags back to both knees. It jolts to a stop, its back curved at an unnatural and painful angle. The hanging golden ornaments from its shoulders swing and clink. Its head hangs, loose and broken with a gaping open mouth--until suddenly, with a _crack_ , it isn’t.

Zelda screams and covers her mouth.

The head turns. It shakes. Two red-yellow eyes light up from within once-empty eye-sockets and stare right into her.

Zelda can count on one hand the number of times she has heard Link use his voice.

This made number six.

“Zelda, _run!”_

Link grabs her hand with his left.

Together, they burst from the chamber.

 

 _ZX_ _WDSS_ _._ _._ _._

 

They charge down the cavern halls as fast as they can, back the way they came. The exact same route, winding and twisting across the uneven floor, rising up the same inclines which they had descended moments before. Zelda clings to Link’s hand, Link gripping back so tight, she wouldn’t be surprised if she lost circulation.

The malice feels as if it is right behind them, right on their heels--stretching down the stairs after them, swallowing everything in its path, just like it had its very own seal--but every time Zelda turns around, she sees nothing there.

They follow the knicks Link had made in the walls to take them back to the minecar rails.

They take the _same exact path._

So Zelda doesn’t understand why they turn a corner and see a _wall_ where there had once been an open chamber.

 _Why_ is there nothing but stone--a dead end--when there should have been space? Their escape should have been here. This should have been their ticket out of the caverns. Just a few more turns, and they would have reunited with their greatbull. So why--?

“W-what’s happening?” Zelda asks, but it feels pointless. Link lets go of her, passes the torch from his right to his left, and reaches for the wall with his swordhand. He feels around, desperately poking, prodding, trying to find something, anything, to mean they have a way out. “This is the way we came, isn’t it? This is--this should have been…”

Link turns to her, something unreadable in the blue of his eyes.

Zelda starts babbling. As it always does while under extreme duress, her mind runs leagues faster than her tongue can follow the words. Theorizing. Hypothesizing. Always hypothesizing.

Endless hypotheses.

“Why did the seal break _now?_ While we were _here_? That can’t have been a coincidence. Can it?”

Zelda’s chest tightens.

“Do you think that--that _thing_ really was once the origin of Calamity Ganon? The stories say he had been a mortal, a citizen of the kingdom, before his hatred sprouted the Calamity. Do you--” Zelda’s throat chokes up; almost refuses to let out the words. Guilt crashes into her. “--you don’t think we’re the cause of its reawakening, do you? Was that our fault? Or were we just in the wrong place at the wrong time?”

Link doesn’t answer.

 _Link, I don’t think I can_ do _another hundred years alone,_ Zelda wants to say. Instead, the choked words come out of her, soft and horrified:  “Link, what have we _done_?”

He moves to answer. His mouth parts. His face tightens.

The ground shakes again, harder than before.

Zelda stumbles. Her hands stick out for balance **.** It takes her a second to realize that she cannot _get_ her balance. It’s impossible; the ground is shaking t **o** o much, trembling too hard like the earth is falling apart. Like _she_ is--falling--

A great _crack_ renders between he **r** and Link. The earth splits, clouds of dust and dirt and stone billowing up with the same sigh of an **e** xhale between gritted teeth.

And then Zelda finds s **h** e really _is_ \--

“LINK!”

\--falling.

A hand snatches onto her own.

Zelda’s vision jerks up to see Link’s tight face. Her body is no longer on solid ground; she’s limp, hanging suspended above a great chasm that’s broke **n** into place right under where she had once stood. Her breath shakes in and out of her in gobs of unev **e** n exhales. On a whim, shaking, Zelda chances twi **s** ting to look beneath her dangling feet.

She cannot see the bott **o** m of the cavern.

Zelda screams. Immediately, she reac **h** es up with her other hand. “Link! Link, please!”

Link had dropped the tor **c** h to grab her with his left hand, but Zelda can see its light still flickering from the floor behind him **,** illuminating the angry gold of his hair and the shadows in his straining face. He reaches with his right--his swordhand--his stronger hand--for her.

Zelda can see his knees dangerously peeking over the edge of the jagged floor.

A sick certainty settles in her gut, **t** he kind of sick assurance that they’re going to die here. She’s going to pull Link over the edge. They’re going to fall who knows how far down. The **i** r bodies will hit jagged rock, stone. Boulders. They’ll inst **a** ntly break upon impact. The sheer pull of gravity alone, multiplied with their mass, **w** ill--

 

 **\--** **T** **I** **A** **W**

 

Their right han **d** s never get the chance to clasp.

Zelda had thought the green hand from before was gone, eaten up by the ma **l** ice the reanimated corpse sprouted when it broke free from its seal. She th **o** ught it was no more. But it snaps out now, desperate, alive, frightened, and the first t **h** ing it latches its long-fingers around is Link’s right arm, just above his elbow.

It j **e** rks back.

Lin **k** cries out, something tight and involuntary, as his arm bends behind him.

Something in p **a** in.

Link loses his foo **t** ing.

Zelda screams, too; but something less in hurt. More fear.

In the same instant as their weightlessness is pau **s** ed, the ethereal green hand of glowing Gerudic script the only thing holding them aloft from certain death, Zelda dares to look **u** p. She watches the way Link’s face contorts with pain; the way sweat beads at his brow; his boots hanging near her head. But still he moves. He twists his grabbed arm upward, desperately trying to cling to the gold-wrapped green in **t** urn.

As soon as his grasping fingers clasp around it’s forearm, there’s a bright fla **s** h of light, filled with the words of a lang **u** age Zelda has never known.

Link sc **r** eams.

The world goes ou **t**.

**Author's Note:**

> Man, Vigenère was certainly a visionary, am I right? Also, have you thought about how pretty the name _Zelda_ is? Honestly...
> 
>  
> 
> Also, not completely related, but after this story is where I imagine Zelda and Link wake up to discover Hyrule Castle's been pushed to the sky and Link's gained new abilities with his right arm thanks to the souls of the Zonai, but this also means he has to learn how to wield the Master Sword with his left hand and meanwhile, in my hopes and dreams, Zelda is able to adventure with him to save Hyrule. And we have our second venture.
> 
> I'm probably way off-base but I like to think maybe there's at least ONE or TWO things I've predicted correctly...


End file.
